Next Friday (December 22) will mark a critical point—the expiration of approximately $23 billion worth of Bitcoin options, which accounts for more than half of Deribit's open interest. This massive expiration is bound to cause significant market impact.

From a technical perspective, market volatility has already noticeably increased. The 30-day implied volatility has risen to nearly 45%, while the options skew is around -5%. This data reveals the true sentiment of market participants—there is greater concern about downside risk.

The distribution of strike prices is quite interesting. Call options are heavily concentrated at the psychological levels of $100,000 and $120,000, but what warrants more attention is the approximately $1.4 billion of put options near $85,000. This price level could become a "magnetic zone" for the market; once broken below, it may trigger a chain reaction.

The macro environment is also complex. Federal Reserve official Goolsbee recently sent mixed signals: on one hand, he said that if inflation continues to decline, rate cuts could be considered; on the other hand, he expressed concern about premature rate cuts, emphasizing the need to see more sustained evidence of cooling inflation. This ambiguous stance makes it difficult for market participants to price accurately.

The direction of the US dollar is also exerting pressure. The dollar index has risen slightly to 98.425, while the euro against the dollar has fallen to 1.7725. A strong dollar typically puts pressure on risk assets, and cryptocurrencies are no exception.

The performance of altcoins is even more worrying. USTC has dropped over 13% in 24 hours, STEEM over 10%, and several tokens like LRC, 10TX, STORJ, THETA, and FIDA have hit new lows. The weekly decline has reached 17.59%.

Interestingly, monitoring shows that in the early hours of December 19, 90 million USDT were transferred from an unknown wallet to an exchange. This could indicate that large funds are preparing for potential sharp volatility, or it may hint that large-scale trading is about to commence.

Overall, with options expiration, policy uncertainty, a strong dollar, and widespread declines in altcoins, the market is currently in a quite sensitive phase. The key points to watch next are: first, whether Bitcoin can hold the $85,000 support level; second, the market's liquidity performance before and after the weekend.